


Breathing

by etrix



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 12:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10465197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etrix/pseuds/etrix
Summary: I wrote this when my grandmother was once more in hospital. She physically died when she was 97 but she was ‘gone’ long before then. It’s about my mother but it’s also about myself.Disclaimer: This is my original work. I don’t mind you sharing as long as you give proper credit and/or a link to it here.Written: Oct 2005





	

Is it enough to just breathe, to drag air into the lungs and push it back out?

It can be a mediation exercise to calm the mind and balance the chi: breathe in, breathe out, in and out. Twenty seconds in, then twenty out again, isn’t that what they say? A smoker might manage ten seconds; an ex-smoker might manage more. Over two years since she’d quit smoking and she doesn’t feel any better, food tastes the same and she’s gained weight.

She still can’t breathe in for 10 seconds.

It’s not enough to just breathe, she decides, just breathing isn’t living. Life is movement and action. It’s running down the street to feel the wind pulling at her hair. It’s that stitch in her ribs that says she doesn’t exercise enough. It’s the voice in her head that nags her to get out and do more. It’s been a long time since she ran down the street for fun, but she can still remember the voice. In fact, she can still hear that voice.

It’s odd how much that voice sounds like her mother.

Breathing, as an action, is weird. It’s absolutely necessary yet completely unconscious. We don’t think of it, it’s just there, day and night, part of us, taken for granted until something happens. Her father snored when he slept, loud and echoing. He’d broken his nose years ago and never had it fixed. No matter how loud he snored, she’d only woken up when he stopped and the house became silent. She’d hold her own breath until the snores started again, as if the sound meant everything was all right, everyone was safe, and alive, and breathing.

Why doesn’t the voice in her head sound like her father?

Why isn’t it ever her father’s voice? Maybe it is for sons; maybe the voice that haunts them is their dad’s. Father and son, mother and daughter: each is a special relationship but it can be a painful and prickly one as well. Whose approval means most to a daughter? She’d certainly wanted her dad’s approval, but it hadn’t hurt when he didn’t say “well done”. It had hurt when her mother didn’t say it. Whatever choice she made, it was never the one her mother thought was right. It had taken her a long time to realize that, as long as she took responsibility for the results, nobody had the right to criticize her choices, not even her mother. She was over 60 and she could finally accept what her mother was and wasn’t–accept and let go of the hurt.

She could breathe easier now.

She gazed at the hand held gently in her own; the skin was wrinkled and spotted. She didn’t squeeze, couldn’t: the bones were too fragile and the feel of them rubbing together made her hair creep. She looked at the hand, she didn’t have to look at the machines beeping for each breath in; measuring not a life, but a death.

One breath at a time.


End file.
